“People often say that if you fly off to India you’re just running away from yourself. And I don’t really buy that. I mean, in some cases you might be running away from yourself, but you might be running to yourself, also.
I have also met a lot of people who are just happier once they get outside the United States and get out of their own cultural constraints. I think you give yourself permission to be someone else in another country — in another culture. It’s a kind of free-floating existence that I have always liked. I understand why a lot of people go overseas and never come back.”
~ Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss, which is a book that sounds interesting enough to put on the TBR list.
Many people made their opinions abundantly clear when we made the decision to take a detour from the lives we were leading. Barely veiled contempt — and almost a sense of anger followed accusations that we’d thrown our money away investing in our townhouse remodel, sideline commentary that we were only doing it to get attention, and the silence by which some people made their disapproval evident — a silence which, in some cases, endures even now — told us more than we expected.
Others responded to our detour with joy for us, a wistful joy, and the recounting of their own experiences post-college: backpacking across Europe, catching frogs in South America, seeing the Seine when they were in the Army, learning Switzerdeutch and not finding any Swiss person who would speak it with them… we reveled in those stories with relief. At least some people wished us well.
We did not fulfill the expectations for our lives, and disrupted the orderly progression of assumption. We weren’t having kids or buying up, and it was almost as if we were somehow cheating, coloring outside of the lines of the life others had led. Apparently we all are supposed to do what everyone else does, or else.
Still, however beguiling the idea, we didn’t set out to go away and never come back. We heard people tell others that we were “moving to Scotland,” and made haste to correct them. “NO, we’re going to school in Scotland,” we assured them. “We’ll be back. You won’t even notice we’re gone.”
That’s not quite true anymore. Some part of us is really, truly, honestly… gone.
We don’t believe that ‘happy’ is a place, or that to be happy we had to leave the U.S., or that we ran away from anything. But in a way, we did really find ourselves at a cul-de-sac in our lives, and, feeling hemmed in, we gave ourselves another option.
It’s obvious why college students go away and backpack through Europe or whatever outmoded 80’s thing people used to do and can’t afford to now – (now people take barista jobs in various cities because the Starbuck, she is everywhere) – obvious, the reasons why people take a year off from school, but a good thing for some. Taking time off from Normal Life when you’re over thirty? Is a better thing, I think, and not enough people do it.
Who makes the rules for Normal Life, anyway?
Most people grow up and consider themselves …grown. We never really started growing up, and are actively working away from being the people that necessity dictated us to be – dutiful child, supportive church member, easy-tempered neighbor, struggling gym jocks – and into the people we wanted to be before college – weird. Random. Alternative. Observers. Fringe-dwellers. People who aren’t fighting so many battles all at once, nor fighting so hard. Choosing the battles, deciding what’s important to us, not running to engage on the strength of what anyone else thinks. Being away is giving us lessons in balance we weren’t aware were needed – or, we may have been aware they were needed, but not how badly. Trying to keep up with Normal Life leeches you of the time you could use to work on things like actually listening… to your heart, and other still, small voices.
It’s important to note that you don’t have to live Normal Life, even if you never change your geographical location…
As always, we continue to be amused by our own misunderstandings. Should you ever be in a student government meeting in the UK, please note that if you table something, it means it’s ON the table to be discussed, not put out of discussion. Also, if you buy a ticket with concessions? That doesn’t mean snacks. Nope. It means you’ve purchased a ticket for a disabled person.
The etymology does not suggest why the American use of the word has anything to do with snacks at the movies or a ball game, and the word meaning itself – to surrender, or yield or admit something is true — doesn’t lend itself to the UK/Commonwealth form either, which deals with allowances for the disabled, although one could say that one has given way… to disabled persons, by providing them rights? But this is a somewhat of a stretch.
This world is a riot for linguists.
– D & T
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Normal life? Yes, what is normal. I found out after getting cancer that I have to find out what a “new” normal is. Frankly, I’d rather not find out…I like discovering “happy” in different places even if it means I have to scream at a few people along the way. I got and still continue to get ALL kinds of unsolicited advice. It used to piss me off but now I ignore most of it and do what I intended to in the first place, although it makes me leery of sharing my thoughts in the first place. Doing what’s right for YOU is the most important. Like me it sounds like your journey through life over 30 is so MUCH more than just a physical one.
By the way that squirrel is evil.
Fabulous and meaningful post. Who did make all those Normal rules? I am slowly beginning to enjoy coloring outside the lines.
I color outside the lines too and always have. Funnily enough, even when I was trying to color inside the lines, I was managing to color outside. I wonder when I finally realized that and thought, oh what the hell, I’ll just give up and be eccentric?
Alas, my life went from small r radical to small c conservative. It was the kids that did it. I still don’t have a “normal” life and hopefully never will.
I can’t believe that people would be “angry” at you for doing something beyond running in the hamster wheel alongside of them. I always applaud my friends decisions that take them positively away from the lives that they are living. A friend and colleague has just been accepted to the Art Institute of Chicago and while I will be sad to see her go, I am so happy and excited for her. Now all she needs to do is find funding….
All “grown” up now, I learned that I could listen to anyone’s advice (and it really makes them happy) but I don’t have to “do” it 🙂 It has saved a lot of my sanity and I wish I would have learned this years ago!
As for the comments about “colouring inside the lines” I always tell my 4 yo son (who really is colouring with a crayon); never listen to anyone who tells you to colour inside the lines, he can colour any way he wants and it will always look beautiful to me 🙂
And while I’m at it I might as well tell you what I’ve been preaching to my 24 yo daughter; “Growing up doesn’t mean growing away.” Keep your parents close, even if you’re a million miles away.
Excellent post!
We are very glad you came here, very, very glad 🙂
Ah, the quest for “happy”… At the risk of rehashing stuff we’ve already talked about elsewhere, my experience living abroad as a working college student wasn’t so much running away from problems (though it WAS) or running to something better. I think I ended up finding new, different, more exciting problems…
…And on being normal…I’m not even sure what that is, and I’ve never seen the need to try to find out! I always seem to be too weird for “normal life” and too tame to be really cool and unusual. I’m in weirdness limbo.
Loved reading this post. After the darkest days it only continues to get lighter and brighter. Not necessarily happier but clearer and more refreshing. As if the heavy limits of “normal” or the path of least resistence has lost it’s resistiveness and all the other paths that seemed too scary, or improbable – or whatever other thing that keeps the naysayers in their ruts – are open for exploration. Bravo hobbits!